2019 in Books
Remember sitting in crowded rooms with strangers? This is the February 2019 Silent Reading Party at the Bindery, and I’m pretty sure that’s me seated on the floor at lower right, reading an August Wilson play for Black History Month.
2019 feels like forever ago. Spending the winter out of work, going to Hackbright, getting my software engineering job, moving into my own apartment… all those things happened within the past 24 months, but they feel like they might as well have happened five years ago.
So it feels especially absurd to be posting my 2019 reading list a year late, given how much the world has changed since then. But perhaps it has its own historic interest: the books I read during the Last Normal Year.
I’ve followed my usual protocols:
One list for plays, one list for everything else
I list only published plays that are available to general readers
Rereads are marked with an asterisk
Book-club books are marked with a dagger
I link to reviews if I’ve posted them on this blog (though there are some books here that I’ve reviewed on Goodreads but haven’t gotten around to blogging)
I list translators’ names as well as authors’! I started doing this in 2018, which was also the year I started working on my translation of Cyrano de Bergerac and spent a lot of time thinking about how much impact a good (or bad) translation can have on our experience of a work.
Non-Plays
† Love in the New Millennium, by Can Xue, translated by Annelise Finegan Wasmoen
Heartless, by Gail Carriger
French Love Poems, anthology edited by Tynan Kogane
Song of Spider-Man, by Glen Berger — my thoughts
Timeless, by Gail Carriger
* D’Aulaires’ Book of Greek Myths, by Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire
The Snow Wombat, by Susannah Chambers, illustrated by Mark Jackson
† The Remains of the Day, by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Habsburgs, by Dorothy Gies McGuigan
* The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas père, translated by Richard Pevear
† Honey in the Horn, by H.L. Davis
The Banishment, by Marion Chesney — my thoughts
Shades of Milk and Honey, by Mary Robinette Kowal — my thoughts
The Shakespeare Wars, by Ron Rosenbaum — my thoughts
D’Aulaires’ Book of Norse Myths, by Ingri and Edgar d’Aulaire
* The Sword in the Stone, by T.H. White
Glamour in Glass, by Mary Robinette Kowal — my thoughts
† The Castle of Otranto, by Horace Walpole
Without a Summer, by Mary Robinette Kowal — my thoughts
If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript, by Angus Croll
Valour and Vanity, by Mary Robinette Kowal — my thoughts
Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight: An African Childhood, by Alexandra Fuller
Of Noble Family, by Mary Robinette Kowal — my thoughts
† Grand Hotel, by Vicki Baum, translated by Basil Creighton
Fingersmith, by Sarah Waters
† The Elegance of the Hedgehog, by Muriel Barbery, translated by Alison Anderson
* Just So Stories, by Rudyard Kipling
* Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier
† The Door, by Magda Szabó, translated by Len Rix
* The Goldfinch, by Donna Tartt
The Secret Commonwealth, by Philip Pullman — my thoughts
* Amphigorey Again, by Edward Gorey
Something That May Shock and Discredit You, by Daniel Mallory Ortberg
† The Tragedy of Arthur, by Arthur Phillips
* An Extraordinary Theory of Objects, by Stephanie LaCava — my thoughts
† On Canaan’s Side, by Sebastian Barry
The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, by E.T.A. Hoffmann, translated by Joachim Neugroschel
The Tale of the Nutcracker, by Alexandre Dumas père, translated by Joachim Neugroschel
Bridget Jones’ Diary, by Helen Fielding
These books, by the numbers:
17 American, 9 British, 4 French, 2 Norwegian-Swiss collaborations, 1 Chinese, 1 Australian, 1 Anglo-Zimbabwean, 1 Austrian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Irish, 1 German
19 books by 14 different female authors; 16 books by 15 different male authors; 3 male-female collaborations; 1 anthology
31 new reads, 8 rereads
I’m not sure how to do my usual genre breakdown. I can easily classify 22 of these books as adult fiction and 5 as adult nonfiction (memoir/history/literary criticism). One is a poetry anthology, one is a picture book for young children. But what about writer-illustrators like Gorey and the D’Aulaires? Are The Secret Commonwealth and The Sword in the Stone YA or not? Is If Hemingway Wrote JavaScript fiction or nonfiction? Categories are baloney.
Plays
Radio Golf, by August Wilson
Gem of the Ocean, by August Wilson
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone, by August Wilson
What To Send Up When It Goes Down, by Aleshea Harris
Spring Awakening, by Frank Wedekind, translated by Jonathan Franzen
* Oedipus el Rey, by Luis Alfaro — read to review this production
Slave Play, by Jeremy O. Harris
He Brought Her Heart Back in a Box, by Adrienne Kennedy
The Thanksgiving Play, by Larissa FastHorse
These plays, by the numbers:
8 American, 1 German
6 plays by 3 different men, 3 plays by 3 different women
8 new reads, 1 reread
I didn’t finish my planned project to read Wilson’s Century Cycle, but I am pleased that 8 of the 9 plays are by people of color, which is thanks in large part to the diverse work that American Theatre has been publishing in their magazine.
Previous Years in Reading lists (2017 and earlier are on my old blog): 2018, 2017, 2016, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007